Planning applications: Changes to historic Calderdale chapel approved by Calderdale Council
Planning permission has been granted to purpose an historic Calderdale chapel for the modern era.
Calderdale Council planners have agreed to permit the changes following a successful application in the spring which brought Providence Chapel at Huddersfield Road, Elland, back as a place of worship.
Work now planned to bring it up to “spec”, including a new open plan youth hall, will see the Grade II-listed chapel, which dates back to 1822, newly purposed.
New toilets, a new kitchen, improved access by installing a new platform lift with glazed lobby, and a new staircase connecting ground and lower ground floors are also planned.
Removing lower ground floor internal partitions will create the new open plan youth hall.
Since its initial heyday as a chapel, after a spell used as offices, including housing Elland’s Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) from the mid 1980s until 1998, it had been used as a chapel of rest.
Elland Christian Centre successfully applied to Calderdale Council to change the use back to one of worship and religious instruction.
Restoration and widening its scope for community services is part of the plan.
As a listed building, the proposed scheme has been designed to ensure “minimum intervention” to the building’s exterior, said supporting statements with the application.
Nine comments, all supportive, were submitted by the public over the application.
One said: “This application would greatly benefit Elland, the plans are sympathetic to the realities of modern times and are respectful to the listing and heritage of this amazing building.”